Any way to avoid Vodafone cancellation fee?

Zack Morris wrote: »

Eircom are the most expensive of the ISPs and they going to rise prices again in a few months. I'd consider Sky if I were moving.

What speeds did they promise you?

100mbps download. Vodafone is 6mbps and Same with Sky, but that might change when Fibre becomes available in the next few weeks. Eircom only works out at 3 quid extra a month for me. I'd rather go with Eircom because some family members work for them so I can get any repairs or callouts done almost straight away instead of waiting nearly a week.

Zack Morris wrote: »

I should have made myself more clearer because I actually meant what speeds did Vodafone promised you? If you're not getting the speeds promised to you by Vodafone, then they're not upholding their end of the contract and should release you.

For the record, Eircom is "up to" 100Mb, it depends on how long your telephone line is. You're currently on ADSL, there is a possibility that when you switch to VDSL (Fibre) your line will improve because it's a different technology.

Sky have joined the eFibre market, too. They will be selling "up to" 100Mb just like Vodafone and Eircom do.

Another thing, when arrives in your area, you're not guaranteed to get it unless they upgrade your local cabinet by building a new one beside it. Your telephone must not be any longer than 2km between the cabinet and your home.

I'm about 1km from my cabinet or whatever the correct term is. Vodafone say that its up to 24Mb, but that my line can only handle 7Mb so thats what I should be getting 99% of the time, according to them. Its never gone above about 5.25Mb. I'll try to link you to a pic of about a months worth of speedtest results, but I don't send links so you'll have to fill in the "(dot)"s with "(.)"s and add the http and all that.

i(dot)imgur(dot)com/Lo7RrgH(dot)png

ED E wrote: »

7Mb is an old ADSL1 exchange*. If it was good with eircom, then got poor with vodafone then theres a good chance the whole exchange is congested now, not just vodafone. If thats the case switching wont help.

If you try and leave vodafone and not pay they can just have it locked by eircom wholesale and itll go dead until the bill is paid.


When the fibre node goes into the exchange the current system will resolve itself, and the new cabs will start going live which will POTENTIALLY give you 100Mb, but at 1KM it could be 30Mb direct fed. Sit tight probably. Or post your line stats so we can verify.


*assuming its 1KM from the exchange at the moment

I just check google maps and its pretty much exactly 1KM away by road. My town onlt has a population of about 3000 (probably a lot less (2175 around the town and urban areas in 2011)) and there are I believe 8-9 cabinets being upgraded for Efibre and possibly a few that aren't, although I can't confirm that.

My neighbour often gets a solid 5.5Mb and much more steady results overall, for some reason. Last summer I was experiencing some issues where my internet would slow to a crawl (about 0.13Mb download) and would stay like that for 1-20 minutes. My neighbour, who is only about 0.05-0.1KM away from me on the same exhange had no issues on Eircom with the same router as me. They replaced my router and it did no good (also they sent Eircom Engineers to fix it at my house). Then after that, I called back and said it wasn't fixed so the guy on the phone said that "I will open up your connection to 12Mb and see if that helps." because he assumed it was congested. So even though I was promised up to 24Mb if it was available, I wasn't getting it. I was able to get 6.9Mb downlaod, although it still slowed to a hault for a while. So they were throttling me instead of giving me the 24Mb I should be able to get. I think I forgot to mention that they said if a high speed becomes available in the future, you speed will automatically increase up as far as 24Mb.

Sorry for going on a bit of a rant.